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In the moments following Speaker John Boehner’s announcement that he lacked sufficient votes in his own caucus to pass his ill conceived, politically-motivated and strategically flawed “Plan B”—a plan designed to do nothing more than put pressure on a President who is, for better or for worse, pressure proof—reaction came swiftly.

The futures market instantly plummeted, setting off anxious chatter over whether or not the Boehner fail would bring a stock market reaction similar to the disastrous drop that followed Congress’ failure to pass TARP on the first vote. TV talking heads—either sagging or wagging depending on your news network of choice—breathlessly switched gears as the story moved from the merits of Boehner’s preposterous plan to discussions of the good, the bad and the ugly of what lay ahead now that Boehner had been neutered before the watching eyes of friend and foe.

And yet, what happened last night was nothing more than a completely predictable final act to a script written, directed and starring John Boehner—a performance piece doomed from the outset to go down in flames because it lacked the one, essential element of any successful drama...

Believability.

Plan B, like all legislation that is not designed to actually become a law, was never believable and the audience has known it all along. The entire ploy was nothing more than pretend legislation designed to embarrass Obama into offering up more cuts in the Plan A negotiations. Why? Because Speaker Boehner apparently missed the memo announcing that the President need never again run for re-election and cannot be embarrassed by a bill that, on its face, was designed to protect millionaire Americans at some small expense to billionaire Americans.

So poorly conceived was this gambit that the original legislation forgot to even address the issue of the sequester, leaving the Speaker to, at the last minute, introduce Plan B-1 that restored all of the defense cuts the sequester had scheduled to rain down on the Pentagon.

Remarkable.

The fact that the audience even bothered to sit through this badly conceived play over this past week reveals that the nation is either so hungry for a happy ending to the Fiscal Cliff drama that they will tolerate any piece of nonsense that pretends to deal with the issue or that we, as a people, simply cannot avert our eyes even though we know the train wreck is coming.

Anyone paying attention last August, as Speaker Boehner found himself unable to herd enough GOP cats under his supposed command to support his “Grand Bargain” agreement with the President, had to know that the Speaker was highly unlikely to manage enough votes—without the help of House Democrats—to carry out his latest poorly conceived plan.

There is just no getting around the reality that Boehner has some 60 Members in his Congressional caucus that are far more loyal to the Club For Growth—or the various other Tea Party entities that fund these people—than they could ever muster for John Boehner. The sheer folly of Boehner's efforts is reflected in his imagining that his taking three of his GOP renegades into the public square and executing them via taking away their committee seats would somehow bring the remaining extremists in line. These people don't care about committee seats. They seek only the platform to pursue an agenda designed to stymie progress and could not care less about pursuing the hard work of Congressional committees that are intended to do the job of moving the country forward.

So, where does John Boehner find himself as he goes home for Christmas, 2012?

Standing at the plate with two outs, two strikes and facing a pitcher whose fastball has grown faster as the game has moved into the late innings. Anyway you slice it, Speaker John Boehner is—barring a miracle—heading for the showers.

What can be John Boehner's Christmas miracle? What can he do to save that tanned, leathery hyde we have come to know so well?

He can make a deal with the President and get a little public love for playing a meaningful role in bringing this foolishness to an end.

In reality, Boehner and the President are not all that far apart in reaching a solution to our Fiscal Cliff problem. At this point, the gap between the two sides comes down to Obama’s desire to count the interest payments that will be saved on the lowered debt resulting from increased taxes and spending cuts as an actual ‘cut’, while Boehner is calling foul on that move—demanding an additional $300 billion in actual cuts to government programs.

Why not find those cuts in Defense?

Despite being the largest slice of our federal budget, nobody in the Congress or the White House seems willing to put the Pentagon budget on the table—and that simply doesn’t make sense. Boehner should shock the world and be the one to suggest cutting $300 billion in the defense budget over the next 10 years. Were he to do this, I strongly suspect he will be able to deliver the small number of Republicans necessary to join with the House Democrats to pass a bill to avert going over the cliff and go from goat status to that of a national statesman.

We all want a strong national defense program. However, when trillions of dollars are spent preparing to fight World War II where warfare no longer bears any resemblance to the way it used to be conducted, is it really unreasonable to review how we are spending all this money and find a few bucks that can be cut?